


Transformation

by Lassarina



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reis enters Nelveska Temple in search of change, but in some ways, returning to who she was is harder than being as she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transformation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingeddserpent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/gifts).



> Written for the prompt, _Reis. I’d love to see something set anywhere in canon. Maybe an exploration of her life prior to becoming a dragon, maybe something about being an amnesiac dragon, or maybe something about her having to readjust to humanity again--plus dealing with her new powers, like breathing fire. Honestly, I’d just love to see more about her, whatever direction you’d like to take. Feel free to have her interact with any of the other characters you’d like, including the generic ones._

The entrance of Nelveska Temple looms large before her. Reis ruffles her scales like a cat might ruffle its fur, and flexes her claws against the flagstones beneath her. There is some part of her that resents the idea of changing back--something about being human that she doesn't remember, but that whispers that this is not a good idea.

She also knows that whisper to be partly a lie; she does not wish to hide in the depths of dank mine shafts from hunters and from--whatever it is that she fears. She cannot recall; Reis-as-human's memories are sealed away from her. There is some danger that haunts both of her selves. She wishes she could recall it, to judge whether human or dragon form is better--safer.

She wonders why she fears.

Beowulf rests a hand on her shoulder; scales do not transmit feeling the way that skin does, but she knows he means to impart comfort. She dips her head to him as the chocobos do, and he smiles--tense and uncertain, but a smile nonetheless. Humans are the only creatures she knows that bare their teeth to show friendliness.

She does not bare hers. It does not seem right. But she does incline her head a little bit toward him, and he seems to take it as encouragement.

"Reis?" The soft voice belongs to Elyn, whose hands bring destruction and healing alike, calling on bright or dark magicks according to her needs. Reis swings her head toward the mage, who was the first of them all bar Beowulf to approach her without fear. Elyn holds out a satchel, the strap carefully held out to make it easy for Reis's teeth to close around it. "It's clothes," she says. "In case you need them, after."

Human fur and scales. Reis stretches out her neck and opens her mouth slowly, carefully closing her teeth around the leather strap. Elyn lets go gently enough that the weight does not pull on Reis's mouth, though it is lighter by far than the bits that some foolish men tried to use to bridle her once when she fled across the realm to Gollund.

She bends her front legs so that she seems to bow to Elyn, who smiles with closed lips and bows back. When she can speak, Reis will thank her, for the times she has used Cure on Reis's wounds, and for her lack of fear.

Elyn steps back, leaving the path into Nelveska clear. The wind today isn't much--certainly it doesn't perturb Reis beneath her scales--but it is enough to moan disconcertingly around the pillars where, minutes ago, hydras crouched. Reis folds her wings flat against her body.

"Here." Beowulf holds out the gleaming blue stone. Reis lifts one of her front legs and turns it upward so that he can set the stone in her claws. It crackles against her skin, bright like lightning and cool like water. She mislikes it, and will make short work of it. Carrying the stone carefully and walking on folded claws, she enters the temple.

It is empty, and dusty, and smells faintly of disuse and death, and a metal tang as of the automaton that met them with such violence. She sets Elyn's satchel carefully behind a stone pillar and approaches the altar, stirring dust as she goes. The auracite clacks dully against the floor, and sparks glisten where it touches.

There is a niche carved into the altar, and it is the right size for the stone. Reis stands before the altar, trembling from she knows not what. The auracite glints in time with her heartbeat, and she fears it. But they have come so far, and so many have endangered themselves on her behalf, on Beowulf's bare word. Does she not owe them more than to turn back at the last moment?

She places the auracite in the niche, and the world turns to a vortex of water, howling like the wind outside. She is drowning in the depths, struggling for air, and yet some part of her knows this to be illusion. She struggles against it, flails her limbs, and it feels like the world draws tight around her and then spits her out, like a child being born.

She wakes curled in a knot on cold stone, and she is shivering. Her body is human once more, not dragon, and now she remembers. She recalls Bremondt's advances, improper for a man of the cloth, and how he sought to curse Beowulf, which curse she took in his place. Small wonder he had been so determined to change her back; he had been motivated not only by love, but also guilt.

She pulls herself to her feet; her limbs feel all askew, after so long on all fours. Yet she will not crawl out of the temple; she will walk. She shuffles slowly toward the satchel she left aside, each step a little more confident as her body straightens. When she reaches the pillar, it takes her a moment to remember how the fastenings of the satchel might be undone; her fingers are clumsy with the laces as she settles the skirt on her hips and tugs the blouse over her head. She and Elyn are much of a size, it seems, and the fabric is fine and soft. She has nothing of her own now, all left behind in Lionel, but Ramza is generous with those who follow him; surely in a battle or two she will have enough to give a fitting gift in return.

The thought of battle turns her stomach; she had never held a weapon before Bremondt's curse, and all her knowledge of fighting is encased in dragon's skin. This human body is so frail in comparison. She is now as she was before: a burden, though the difference is that she knows it now.

Well, a burden she might have been before, but she can learn to be otherwise now, if she can recall the words to ask for it. She opens her mouth to practice, and a tiny gout of flame escapes. She flinches back and stares at the bright fire before it winks out.

Humans do not breathe fire.

She opens her mouth again and thinks of the cold that wraps around her even now, clad in warm clothes, and a cloud of ice shards issues forth, striking the pillar a few paces away. Reis presses her hands to her mouth, carefully, but it feels no hotter or colder than it did before.

Behind her in the altar, the auracite winks blue.

She spends a few minutes practicing her breathing, learning how to call it at her will, and wonders what it looks like outside the temple as she brings tongues of fire and flashes of lightning into being. She practices words between breathing, the shape of them strange in her mouth when her tongue is thicker and shorter than before. She practices her steps, until she walks like a human and not like a beast.

At last she approaches the altar and reaches out her hand carefully. Though she did not speak as a dragon, her hearing was not impeded, and she has heard the whispers of what these stones can do to an impure heart. She prays her own is pure enough for it.

The stone lies quiescent in her hand, only the occasional wink of light to betray its power.

She leaves the temple and walks into Beowulf's arms, a woman transformed in more ways than one.


End file.
